Tech Giants Are Building a Dystopia of Desperate Workers and Social Isolation
jacobin.com
jacobin.com
The thing about those arguments is, they were right. Those trends did transform our lives in many negative ways (in addition to positive) and we did see it coming.
What I don't like is the prognosis, which seems to think we should somehow stop or reverse the current transformation. I just doubt that's possible. Instead, we should take some lessons from the past and this time around we can proactively ameliorate the worst aspects of the ongoing changes. Something we completely failed to do with chain takeovers or mega mergers or outsourcing or all of the other corporate trends that harm, either directly or through side effects, the vast majority of working people.
Why not? Sometimes change is just plain for the worse. However, passivity and helplessness in the face of change are attitudes that are common and frequently encouraged in modern society, and that is another problem that needs to be addressed.
That doesn't sound like passivity or helplessness to me.
> Instead, we should take some lessons from the past and this time around we can proactively ameliorate the worst aspects of the ongoing changes.
Yeah, I like this way of slicing it. What do you think are those downsides, and how could they be ameliorated?
I think with a more remote-focused industry, it still makes sense to have coworking and neighborhood satellite offices. I think coworking was just a bit ahead of it’s time. The set wave really started breaking with COVID.
It might be a little tougher trying to complain about your code or describe your refactor to someone at another company altogether. But it could also be nice to have a completely disinterested (in corporate terms) party who can lend a sympathetic ear.
Meetups were already a thing but I’ve petered out on them, not sure if that’s a personal or widespread phenomenon. But I do crave that again. I’ve been wanting to start a book club, as well. The two aren’t entirely mutually exclusive. Sometimes old things can be new again. I also miss attending tech conferences and am looking at some this year.
And I know this idea has been done to death, but I also very much value my time at my community garden and athletic clubs (not a gym–a community organization). Doing clinics at both have introduced me to new people to continue enjoying the respective activities, as well as just making general friends that enrich each others’ lives.
I used to think social media could help with this kind of stuff but Corporate Social Media fell flat on that promise for me. The only social media I use now are this site, mailing lists for said organizations, and text/calls on my iPhone.
Maybe we need a speed-dating thing for making new acquaintances. Online people talk so much about social anxiety, we need to get comfortable with putting ourselves out there and embrace the fact that things might get weird. Sometimes that makes it interesting, and sometimes that is a good thing.
Would you agree it's better to passively accept some future being pushed on you, or try to influence the shape of that future?
There's no such thing as "the future;" there are many possible futures. One of those possibilities "the future" being sold by Uber et. al is rejected, they go bankrupt or pivot to something entirely different, and all except a few are better off for it.
I just listened to a podcast episode on musicians going on a recording strike in the 40's because recorded music was killing the careers of live musicians. It did, but you weren't going to stop it, either.
This seems to me suggests adjusting the course toward something better, and we've seen that regulating the market can make a difference in that regard eg in how the EU is (mildly so far) regulating data and tech giants. It certainly seems possible. I wouldn't say "we can't stop so this isn't constructive".
But we should insist that these companies employees are paid and provided benefits to like employees, and not allow companies to offload all expenses and risks into vulnerable people by calling them “gig workers”.
There is massive asymmetry, for example, in the ability of an Uber driver driving their own car and Uber, in the information they have about the actual risks and costs involved in driving that car. Companies take advantage of that asymmetry in information to exploit workers.
That is something we should indeed stop and make sure the employees are paid properly, given proper benefits and protections.
We have to admit that the current climate of "struggle until you go viral for 5 seconds" is going to devastate the world and only serve to enrich the already wealthy people that own and run tech platforms.
Trust fund babies are able to thrive and become leaders in this type of model because wealth hoarders can easily buy themselves past the threshold of visibility and profit... Right now, the people we are seeing most are people that spend a lot of money on ads and marketing to boost their visibility.. Organic visibility is a dead wish, perpetuated by social and other platforms to keep people struggling towards success without hope.
In order to start a business or other venture from scratch, the organization needs to have lots of capital for marketing alone over product development and overhead costs, that makes upward mobility for anyone middle class or below damn near impossible.
This is a plague on the entire world right now, as disadvantaged people resort to crime or other negative schemes to fund their goals in legitimate business. The entry bar is set abnormally high, and talent no longer is a measure of success, it simply becomes who had money to rise.
This type of controlled opportunity environment breeds negative predatory behaviors all around, wealth hoarding, mediocrity, more monopolies, and inherent unfairness that will eventually keep everyone unemployed and underemployed while creating even more powerful meritocracies and lobbies that impact everything form real estate to politics.
This is a very serious issue, and a deep threat towards world economic stability in my opinion.
When was this NOT the case, though? The monetarily successful have always been overwhelmingly from monetarily successful backgrounds.
Those are some of the many delivery interactions that are gone now. Now that "big automobile" and their cabal have created a dystopia of having to leave the house. It's a horror so immense that even "big catalog" and "big telephone" and "big radio" can't fight it off.
The word "progress" in technology is misused in the same way it is when talking about evolution. The evolution of the eye was not done with progressions, because that implies a destination or goal.
You _can_ look at the eye and think of the steps that led to it to be progressions, and that's fine! but only if you do it consciously.
Similarly, we need to be mindful when we see technological change as progress, because we're by definition implicitly stating that there's a goal towards something. Not acknowledging that give us the benefits of such an assumption, without the downsides of responsibility (i.e. examining that goal).
Now my point: There often isn't a conscious goal with technological change, and that is dangerous. If we look at the resultant change, there is nothing wrong with saying that things are headed in a bad direction, and we wish to change course. It is not Ludditism, and shouldn't be shamed.
_Some_ things will always stay ultimately, like great restaurants/bars/clubs/... _if_ they focus on the human experience. I do not drive to a italian restaurant any longer to have a great pizza - I could simply order me one nowadays! - but the experience maybe a few hours of the flair being there.
I would never feel comfortable having someone else doing my shopping for me - unless i was severely incapacitated for some reason of course.
Same with cooking, cleaning, washing my clothes etc. I could pay someone to do that but I get a lot of joy out of basic chores I guess.
I'm not sure what the thought process was there. Walmart went from me doing most of the work to them doing almost everything. The day pickup stops being free, I'll likely just throw in the towel and start paying more to get groceries from another chain.
1) Pickup is asynchronous, so no long lines will form. If it's busy you get the notification ~15 minutes later than you normally would
2) There's no possibility of shop lifting (not saying that _you_ steal, but inevitably some people do)
3) Maybe the parking lot or the store is actually full (fire code) and the actually amount of commerce is being bottlenecked by people in the store. You can literally just sell more stuff if you have everyone do a 2 minutes pickup.
4) Pickup selection requires you to go into the app, perhaps where they have opportunities to upsell you in clever algorithmic ways.
Chalk it up as a win-win. Not everything has to be either they lose or I lose
I need high quality supplies, restaurant food at my doorstep. If it somehow result in low wage/ worker agony, this is the sacrifice I am willing to make
That would probably be better phrased along the lines of, "that's a price I'm willing to make you pay."
Basically make it crystal clear the person speaking is not the one making the sacrifice, but rather perverting the phraseology of self-sacrifice.
Also, everyone may decide what to spend their money on, be it on vacations, hobbies, goods or … having stuff delivered.
> Also, everyone may decide...
A normative claim, not a substantive one. Besides, it's a misappropriation of what "liberty" means. Liberty is a collective phenomenon: it is not enough for each person to express it individually, but in order to stand for liberty we must act in such socially beneficial ways as to promote liberty for all. "Liberty for me, not for thee" is a contradictory statement.
I can't hire myself in the past, but there are other people who are in other places in their lives than I am.
It doesn't have to. But it does, often, nonetheless, currently.
Do you know anyone who does gig work for their main or only income? Are they happy with their lives? For now we are leaving aside "externalities" such as all the extra cars on the road creating traffic and extra emissions and focusing on the topic of TFA.
One has to wonder: what sort of systemic, material forces sustain this imbalance? which companies are propped up with subsidies, investment, etc.? why do people put money into those companies in which ways and for which reasons? how are those companies incentivized to operate given their positions in the economy? what does that mean for the people who are dependent on the money they are paid in wages from the only company willing to employ them to avoid a destitute life of food and housing insecurity? what could we do differently to alleviate this very real pain felt by millions every day?
Paying people "accordingly" for running Doordash orders would result in a complete collapse of Doordash because its business model is unsustainable without 1) subsidies a la venture capital and 2) minimizing compensation (wages, liabilities, wear&tear on personal property) paid to the drivers vis-a-vis the maximization of quarterly profits. Delivery fees would cost absurd amounts and no one would be able to afford the service without these factors.
Some people make arguments in favor of the company surviving at the expense of the workers; others prefer to insist in the opposite direction.
The solution that solves that problem is to remove the infrastructure from the capitalist market - for example, by nationalizing UberEats or Amazon (although nationalization isn't the only option)
Doing so would allow the business to continue as usual but the expenses that are external to each transaction would be offloaded to a third party (the government for example, or just written off) thus allowing the maximum amount of people to access the service at the lowest price.
6 in one, half dozen in the other.
Getting what you want when you want it does not necessarily mean cheap exploitation.
We „only“ need to stop shareholders siphoning money and redirect that wealth back to the workers instead.
Worst case the working class would have money to spend, maybe even for other convenience on-demand stuff, recursively. I would be willing to accept a few dozen billionaires being degraded to millionaires as the prize, when in doubt they can protest on the streets against that.
Transitioning folks into skilled/good-paying jobs would be better than trying to make service jobs a desired destination.
Awesome, these companies can pay good wages to their workers and pass on the cost knowing they won’t lose you as a customer.
For example Edeka (German supermarket chain) increases prices when ordering significantly as well as adding a base fee for shipping. This roughly adds 30%-50% compared of buying the same things in the same store manually.
Sure, it’s a luxury position to say that, but I happily pay that.
They just need to be treated and payed better. The people using these services by design have money to spend, "outrageous" delivery tips and fees can be justified if the fees are actually going to the workers.
> people on the political right often criticize public investment as wasteful and corrupt, but the reality is that the retreat of the state hasn’t resulted in some idyllic “free” market — it has just left wealthy, powerful, and ultimately unaccountable people in charge of shaping the economy.
which is hilarious, given that these companies exist in the most left geographies, owned and run by the most left oligarchs, owned by the left politicians, and it was the left policies forcing people to use these companies that entrenched them to begin with.
I think you’ve forgotten that one of the most influential neocons, Ronald Reagan, hailed from California. As did Nixon, interestingly enough.
California != bastion of liberalism